elias being aroused by the compulsion is so, like, the implications. the archivist's compulsion is meant to be a violation of the highest degree, it's an act of domination over another being and results in complete loss of autonomy for the victim, because statement feeding (and avatarhood as a whole) is also consumption ("he looked at me like he had just eaten a perfectly cooked steak", 142 // "i've always thought a man's eating habits were his own private business", elias in 148), jon was eating them so his god wouldn't eat him, just as his first encounter with the powers was a story about being devoured by a monster. so. why would elias like this, why is he excited by it. because he's two hundred years old and has spent most of those years hiding his true self as jonah magnus while serving the fear of being known/found out—that alone makes him an excellent source of fear for the eye to passively feed on. but he also describes jon's compulsion as "tingly, but sort of freeing" in 92, as if the prospect of having his entire self finally, forcibly revealed under the eye of their god after all this time will be a moment of ecstatic release, because he takes so much gloating pleasure in revealing his secrets to jon in 160, because he wants to be Known, the only thing he objects to is the revelation coming at a wrong time because that would ruin his plans. and, of course, the whole loop of jon extracting a statement <--> elias being compelled, which in turn is feeding the beholding, works as a great metaphor for sex. the gratification the beholding rewards them with for the act can only be experienced by the two of them, because nobody else will gladly feed jon their fear and only his archivist can compel jonah. like. all im saying is there was no need to make [PLEASURED EXHALATION] a thing and then never bring it up again. because whats all this then.
